Under a Gibbous Moon

This is all this big ta-do with Lawrence Taylor seems to be about. Some prosecutor is trying to get a name by prosecuting LT with a big name crime. Third degree rape sounds bad and will get you public kudos for taking someone down. I’m not terribly familiar with New York law, but from what I have read the don’t have a solid case for this charge. Rape in the 3rd degree is what New York calls statutory rape most other places. From what I have read, both parties have claimed that the prostitute misrepresented her age. I imagine that would take the wind out of their sails. Seems to me that if this wasn’t high profile, they probably would have just gone with solicitation of a prostitute and focused more on the pimp for trafficking.

Warning, this post is a bit long, has lots of information links, government statistics, and a video to boot.

Fûz over at WeckUpToThees! has put up a link to a very disturbing video as well as asked a very important question. Before I get ahead of myself you watch, then we’ll talk.

By the end of that video,  a pit bull and a corgi are dead, a seven year old boy is traumatized, a man is found to be in possession of a misdemeanor’s worth of marijuana, and two parents are charged with child endangerment.

The question that was presented deals with the police’s use of force and their general attitude toward the suspects with regards to Sir Robert Peel’s principles of policing. For those unfamiliar with them (like me), here they are:

This list, I believe, encompasses what policing should be and not what it has become. From the video, it is obvious that the SWAT team violated at least rule 4 and rule 6 was also quite probably violated.

The level of violence that was displayed against one family in the execution of a, as th police officers put it “narcotics search warrant”, was completely out of proportion. They way they treated the suspect during the arrest was unwarranted also. At about 1:30 a police officer kicks the suspect, who is on the ground, for failing to put his hands behind his back instead of behind his head. At around 2:20, the suspect, now handcuffed is pulled up off the ground by the shackles. In case you’re wondering if that is painful, clasp your hands behind your back and have someone jerk upwards. Go ahead, I’ll wait. See? At least six officer present and they could only spare one to jerk him to his feet.

Afterwards, despite his demands, they give him essentially no information as to what is going on. Search warrants are very specific. They state what is to be searched (i.e. the porch, the cabinet in the kitchen, the whole property) and what they are searching for (i.e. not just “narcotics”) and maybe Missouri is different but I believe he has the right to review the search warrant. I would say that their treatment of him post arrest is a clear violation of rule 7.

Do you think that anyone in that house, anyone they know (or anyone who watches the video for that matter) is going to have a warm fuzzy spot for the police? That would be rules 1 and 3.

Wow, by my count, in the space of five minutes, they managed to break 5 of the Peel’s Principles. I’m not going to say it’s a record but it does take effort.

What causes this type of behavior in police departments from Maine to California is what I like to call Thin Blue Line Syndrome. It’s the idea, that has gained significant momentum over the last three or four decades, that police officers are a special class of citizen, distinct and aloof from those they claim to serve.

I’m certain that we all know, or at least have read about police officers who look upon everyone else as a felony waiting to happen and yet at the same time will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up the wrong doings within their own ranks.

One source of this line of thought is the notion that everyday they gird their loins and go forth to patrol the mean streets, putting their life on the line for their fellow man. Of course their special. One thing I have found interesting about this is that at the same time you also hear how most police officers will never fire their weapon in the line of duty.

So in the spirit of Mythbusting, I wanted to find out how thin the blue line was. According to the most recent complete (2008)  Bureau of Labor Statistics for occupational fatalities, the average rate for workplace fatalities was 3.7 per 100,000 full time workers (pdf page 2). In that same year, the fatality rate for police officers was 16.3.

OK, seems quite a bit higher (for an interesting comparison, the fatality rate for security officers was 7.5), but wait, according to a further breakdown, of the 144 police officers killed in the line of duty, 33 were homicides. By comparison, 38 police officers were killed in driving related incidents.

The reason this is important is that driving is very dangerous. In 2008 driving related fatalities (pdf page 4) resulted in 23% of all workplace fatalities (with combined transportation coming in at 64%). So yes, driving on the job is dangerous. Other jobs which also have a major driving component have much higher fatality rates (truck driver 24.0 and taxi drivers 19.3 pdf page 19).

So if we focus on the times that police officers are killed in the line of duty we come up with a rate of 3.7 (33 deaths out of 883,600 police officers). This is exactly the same as the average fatality rate for the country as a whole. By the way, if we do the same for security officers, 46 homicides out of 1,086,000, we come up with 4.2. So yes, you are more likely to be killed on the job as a rent a cop than a real cop. Think about that next time you are at the mall.

The conclusion to this is, that in our rush to hero building, we have created our own monster. We have built up this myth that the police are urban soldiers and then are surprised when they treat us like the enemy.

Hat Tip: Hell and a Hand Basket

This is something that occurred to me lately. We’ve all heard of the people who are caught by tracing incriminating information back to their computer, through traffic over the internet or via the files stored on the computer itself.

Now, we’ve also all heard of people using the prepaid cell phones as disposable phone that are used for the planning of or in the commission of the crime and are then thrown away afterwards.

Now with the proliferation of cheap computers (notably netbooks), I wonder if any enterprising criminals are using them solely for the planning or execution of a crime and then just ditching it afterwards. By ensuring that no personal information is ever placed on the computer and using public internet access, relative anonymity and plausible deniability can be maintained.

Of course, this now means that buying a netbook will put you on the FBI’s watch list and you’ll get asked at the airport if you own or have ever owned a netbook.

At least in Ohio. James Barnes received a ticket for ticket for going 84 in a 65 zone along interstate 75. His speed was not acquired by either laser or radar but by calculations made by an Ohio State Highway Patrol airplane (yes, there’s a great use of taxpayer money). In short:

The pilot testified that in Barnes’ case, on the day in question, he first observed a white vehicle, later determined to be driven by Barnes, halfway through the first marked quarter-mile section. As this vehicle entered the second quarter-mile section, meaning the moment the front bumper/grill portion of the white vehicle met the second white epoxy mat, he began timing the vehicle with his two stop watches. At the end of the second section, the pilot noted that 10.68 seconds had elapsed, giving him a speed of 84 miles per hour. He also timed the vehicle through the third and fourth quarters, ascertaining the elapsed time at 10.66 seconds and 11.61 seconds, respectively, giving him speeds of eighty-four miles per hour for the third quarter and seventy-seven miles per hour for the fourth quarter.

The pilot also claims there were no other white vehicles along that stretch of interstate at that time, a claim I find dubious, if not ludicrous.

Barnes, though, thought he was lucky because his employer tracked his whereabouts and speed via GPS, just to make sure that he was being a good boy. Barnes pulled the company logs which showed him going 50 mph. Unfortunately, since GPS is such a new and untested technology (first GPS satellite launched in 1978 and fully operational by 1995) the judge rejected this evidence.

Barnes testified that his speed was detected through his Verizon Wireless cellular phone. He testified that his employer utilizes a GPS program to detect the location and speed of its employees when traveling through their cellular phones and that this program actually sends alerts to his employer if one of its employees is speeding. As previously noted, he submitted downloaded documents regarding his speed and location when the troopers stopped him on March 17, 2009. These documents reflected a rate of speed of 50 miles per hour at the time the troopers purported that he was traveling at 84 miles per hour. However, Barnes did not have an independent recollection of his speed at that time. In addition, Barnes testified that the GPS provided the average of his speed over a two-minute time frame. In other words, the GPS did not give his specific speed at a specific time, but an average speed over two minutes.

The judges complaint is, that since Barnes GPS report didn’t give instantaneous speed, it doesn’t count. My favorite part of this is the judges lack of mathematics. Barnes GPS gave an average speed over a time period of two minutes (120 seconds). It is also given that, according to Barnes GPS, he never exceeded the posted speed limit, otherwise he would have been flagged by his employer.

According to the police airplane, we can account for 32.95 seconds of that time. Now we must assume that Barnes GPS speed covers at least part of the time that the ticket was issued for, otherwise it would have simply been thrown out for being irrelevant.

First we’ll look at a best case scenario for the defendant. This assumes that the 32.95 seconds that he was timed by the pilot fit within a full two minutes of his GPS average time. This leaves 87.05 seconds unaccounted for. The average sample time of the pilot is just a hair under 11 seconds giving us 11 roughly equal time samples.

The average speed for three time samples is 81.67 mph ( (84 + 84 +77) /3 ). Now the article says he was charged with 84 in a 65 but we’ll run with the average. The GPS states that in a 120 second period, Barnes averaged 50 mph.

Given 11 samples, a value of 550 must be obtained to average 50 ( SUM(data) / 11 = 50 therefore SUM(data) must equal 550). For the known time samples we have 84 + 84 + 77 = 245. Subtract 245 from 550 and you are left with 305. The SUM(unknown) must equal 305 in order to make a 50 mph average.

The fun part about this, is the higher we speed we make any of the given unknown points, the lower the rest must go to make up the average. The best possible solution, then, is to simply give the average of the remaining data points (305 / 9 = 33.89). So yes, in order for him to be going 81.67 mph for 32.95 seconds he would have to have been averaging 33.89 mph either before or after (or both) the sample period.

Next, for the worst case scenario. That is were only a single sample period falls within Barnes 120 second average. We’ll take the lowest, 77 mph for 11.61 seconds. Whether we round up to 12 time periods or down to 11 time periods, the difference is almost identical so I’ll round up since it gives Barnes as having a faster average.

12 time periods must equal 600 ( SUM(data) / 12 = 50). 600 – 77 = 523. Since we only had one sample this time, we  are left with 11 unknown points. Given that for each high data point another data point must be reduced to total to our remaining 523, we take the average and arrive at 523 / 11 = 47.55. So, once again, whether before, after, or both, Barnes was averaging 47.55 mph.

In the first scenario, for the pilot to have been correct, Barnes was going only 41.5% of the speed he was alleged to have been going out side of the sample period and 58.2% in the second scenario.

In either case, he apparently suddenly increased his speed rather radically increased his speed for a very brief period of time (32.95 seconds), was “clocked” by an aerial observer, and then returned to a slower speed.

Math calls bullshit.

Back in February, one Brian McGacken was brought to his front door by the knocking of New Jersey State Troopers. It seems that someone had phoned in an anonymous 911 call that there were screams coming from his house. McGacken and his girlfriend confirmed that there had indeed been screaming and it had been do to them having (very) loud sex.

Not satisfied with this answer, the police searched the home and uncovered a marijuana factory. McGacken was arrested and convicted. In his appeal, he questioned the probable cause that initiated the discovery. The judge denied the appeal stating that:

The police are not required to accept the explanation that a person answering the door gives for a distress call. While loud sex may have been a plausible source of screaming, that explanation was not so reliable that the police acted unreasonably in investigating further….

But what about it being an anonymous complaint? Oh ya, they covered that:

Defendant did not deny that screaming had occurred in his residence. His admission made it unnecessary for the police to seek corroboration to establish the reliability of the anonymous 911 call.

The points above are listed in order in the ruling. The court first said that an anonymous tip trumps face to face. Essentially, people with names lie but anonymous tipsters never do.

The courts explanation for the second point is essentially a hand wave. Their first point clearly states that the “explanation was not so reliable” that the police still had probable cause despite the explanation. Since there was no screaming when the police arrived (which further bolsters the reliability of the excuse) they should have to get a warrant if they really feel that there is something sinister going on.

The biggest problem with this is that the source of the complaint is anonymous. No one is held responsible, there is no confronting your accuser. It could have come from anyone for any reason. Hell, with a case like this the police could just start calling in anonymous tips to search any house they want.

I once had a neighbor that wouldn’t turn down their music. When I called the police I came outside when the officer arrived and went with him when he knocked on the door. I’m not saying that everyone needs to be so bold (though it would help), but if you are going to file a complaint you better be willing to put your name behind it.

Hat Tip: Boing Boing